CNN
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Authorities in Germany face rising accusations they may have finished extra to stop a lethal Christmas market assault as a choose ordered the suspect to be held in pre-trial detention following a late-night courtroom look on Saturday.
Taleb Al Abdulmohsen is accused of ramming a automobile right into a busy market within the metropolis of Magdeburg, killing 5 individuals and injuring greater than 200.
The motive for the assault is unclear however the suspect is a 50-year-old Saudi citizen who has lived in Germany for greater than a decade and labored to assist Saudis go away his house nation. On social media, he has been a fervent critic of Islam and prosecutors urged he might have grow to be embittered with how Germany treats Saudi refugees.
Recent messages have grown more and more threatening. One says “if Germany needs to kill us, we’ll slaughter them, die, or go to jail with pleasure.”
“The Justice of the Peace ordered pre-trial detention for 5 counts of homicide, a number of counts of tried homicide and several other counts of harmful bodily hurt,” a press release from police early Sunday mentioned.
“The accused was taken to a correctional facility accordingly.”
The police additionally launched extra particulars on the victims of Friday’s assault. The lifeless embody a nine-year-old boy and 4 ladies aged 45, 52, 67 and 75, in keeping with the assertion.
The assault has been met with confusion and anger from the general public and politicians, with questions raised over potential safety lapses simply two months earlier than federal elections the place immigration is prone to be a flashpoint challenge.
Germany stepped up safety at Christmas markets – a fixture of the festive season – following a lethal automobile ramming in Berlin in 2016.
But Magdeburg police chief Tom-Oliver Langhans mentioned Saturday that the attacker was in a position to achieve entry to the market utilizing emergency exit factors, normally reserved for ambulances and different emergency automobiles.
At the identical convention, metropolis official Ronni Krug insisted the safety idea for the Magdeburg Christmas market was “consistently being revised and modified.”
Krug continued, “How this case may come about should first be investigated by the police. I can’t bask in hypothesis. But you’ll be able to relaxation assured that we are going to proceed to replace the safety idea, which we’re consistently updating anyway, as soon as we have now reached an evaluation with our colleagues from the police.”
Saudi authorities had beforehand warned their German counterparts concerning the suspected attacker, on a number of events, two sources with information of the communications informed CNN.
CNN reached out to the German Foreign Ministry for remark concerning the warnings and was referred to the Ministry of Interior, which in flip referred CNN to the general public prosecutor’s workplace in Magdeburg. CNN has not acquired a response from the prosecutor’s workplace.
But talking to German public broadcaster ZDF, Holger Münch, the president of Germany’s federal legal workplace confirmed, “We ourselves have been as soon as the recipient of a tip-off from Saudi Arabia in November 2023.”
He continued that proceedings have been initiated and Saxony-Anhalt police took “acceptable investigative measures,” nevertheless the knowledge that they had on Taleb al-Abdulmohsen was too “unspecific” and he was “not identified for violent acts.”
German politicians from reverse ends of the political spectrum have seized on Friday’s lethal assault to assault the coalition authorities.
Sahra Wagenknecht, chief of the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance occasion, known as for Interior Minister Nancy Faeser to clarify “why so many ideas and warnings have been ignored beforehand.”
Bernd Baumann, the parliamentary head of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), demanded a particular parliamentary session be known as to debate safety points in a put up on X.
In a sign of the tensions which have been stirred up within the wake of the assault, far-right protesters took to the streets of Magdeburg on Saturday night. Some clad in balaclavas, they waved an indication saying “remigration” – a time period calling for the mass deportation of immigrants.
Saturday’s demonstration was attended by over 2,000 individuals, police mentioned.
The anti-immigrant AfD is holding a rally on Monday adopted by a march mourning the victims.
